As seen in a recent infographic from Forrester Research, the global mobile payments marketplace is quite crowded.

However the high number of players has not helped to increase the adoption rate among consumers and businesses.Nowadays the challenges are not to develop the technology but to change the habits of consumers/businesses and win their trust.

Most consumers do not mind using their cards or cash to make a payment and will not switch to mobile payments until they understand the real benefits for them.

The same principle applies to businesses – in order to incorporate new payment services, businesses must see the added value, not only for their business, but also for their customers.This whitepaper looks at a new trend in the financial sector – the spirit of ‘cooperative competition’, with a focus on the British banking industry, which has started to invest heavily in mobile payments.

To keep up with trend setters such as PayPal, Square, V.me from Visa etc, the banking industry must radically reshape and innovate its products and channels. Therefore some banks and financial institutions have adopted a new strategy – the ‘cooperative competition’ (as Philippe Eschenmoser, Head of Business Consulting at SIX Payment Services named it) which means partnering either with other banks or with various mobile payments providers.

This spirit of collaboration is definitely defining a new era of innovation in financial services.Banks meet consumers’ need for trust and security, while mobile payment providers have the technological means to deliver an innovative, fast and convenient customer experience.

In Europe, recent examples of this spirit of cooperation can be found in Sweden, France, Poland and UK.